Roger Clemens made his first return to baseball wearing a banana-colored jersey.
Clemens, 61, surprised the Savannah Bananas, a popular barnstorming exhibition baseball team, in front of a crowd of about 41,000 people at Minute Maid Park in Houston on Saturday night. pitched.
In a game against the rival Party Animals, he allowed three hits, including a home run, and retired one batter.
The seven-time Cy Young Award winner was indecisively in and out of retirement during the latter part of his 24-year career, but his last MLB pitch was with the Yankees in 2007.
He pitched in two games in 2012 for the Sugar Land Skeeters of the Atlantic League, an independent professional based outside his hometown of Houston, where he was able to pitch to his son Coby behind the plate.
Five runs were scored while Clemens was on the mound for the Bananas, including both runners he took over.
so what? Clemens, wearing a yellow jersey with the number 22 in blue on the back, received many high-fives and cheers from the crowd as he returned to the dugout.
Clemens wasn’t the only surprise for most Astros fans in the building.
Roy Oswalt, 46, a three-time All-Star and league championship series MVP, also pitched one-third of an inning, allowing three hits and recording a strikeout.
Clemens and Oswalt were Astros teammates from 2004 to 2006.
The Bananas are like the dance and baseball version of the Harlem Globetrotters.
The Party Animals, like the Washington Generals, are often defeated foes.
Saturday marked the first appearance at an MLB ballpark rather than a traditional minor league ballpark, but there are five more games on the 2024 schedule, including Boston’s historic Fenway Stadium. This includes one time at the park.
Due to his alleged ties to performance-enhancing drugs, Clemens was inducted into the Hall of Fame on 10 ballots, never receiving more than 65.2 percent of the votes in his final year of eligibility (2022).
However, his 354 wins are second only to contemporary Greg Maddux (355) among pitchers who played since 1965.
